Essay and speech on Jewish disabilities

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WISH DISABILITIES

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1910

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ESSAY AND SPEECH

ON

JEWISH DISABILITIES

BY
LORD MACAULAY

EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES, BY

ISRAEL ABRAHAMS, M.A.

AND THE

REV. S. LEVY, M.A.

Second Edition

Printed for the

Jeivish Historical Society of England

my BALLANTYNE, HANSON ^ CO.

EDINBURGH

1910

y

NOTE

The authors and editors of all volumes
published by the Jewish Historical Society
of England accept full and sole responsi-
bility for the views expressed by them.

CONTENTS

PAGE

Editors' Introduction ... 7
Macaulay's Essay . . . -19
Macaulay's Speech . . . .42
Editors' Notes 63

ILLUSTRATIONS

Portrait of Macaulay . . Frontispiece

The frontispiece is a reduced photograph of
the portrait by Sir Francis Grant, P.R.A. The
original is in the National Portrait Gallery, Lon-
don (No. 453).

Macaulay's Autograph. . To face page 62

A facsimile reproduction of Macaulay's sig-
nature at the end of a letter to Macvey Napier,
Editor of the Edinburgh Review, dated loth Feb.
1839. The original is in the British Museum
(Add. MS. 34,620 f. 83 b).

INTRODUCTION

The first edition of this reprint of Macaulay's
famous essay and speech on the removal of
Jewish disabih'ties was timed for pubh'cation
on December 28, 1909, the fiftieth anni-
versary of their author's death. It was
intended to serve a double object. In the
first place, it was a tribute to the memory
of Macaulay in grateful recognition of his
strenuous advocacy of the cause of Jewish
emancipation ; and in the second place, it
was designed to be a further memento of the
celebration organised by the Jewish Historical
Society of England in 1908, on the occasion
of the jubilee of the admission of Jews into
Parliament.

Neither the essay nor the speech was
Macaulay's first contribution to the cause
of Jewish emancipation. Thomas Babington
(afterwards Lord) Macaulay (1800- 1859)
entered the House of Commons at the
7

Introduction

General Election of 1830. On April 5, in
that same year, Mr. (afterwards Sir) Robert
Grant moved to bring in a Bill to remove
Jewish political disabilities. The motion
was opposed by Sir Robert Inglis. When
Inglis resumed his seat, "Sir James Mac-
kintosh and Mr. Macaulay," as Hansard
reports, " rose together, but the latter, being
a new Member, was called for by the
House." Thus, Macaulay's maiden speech
was delivered in behalf of the Jewish
cause. It made considerable stir. Sir James
Mackintosh took part in the debate later,
and after complimenting the young orator,
said : "I do not rise, therefore, to supply
any defects in that address, for indeed there
were none that I could find ; but it is
principally to absolve my own conscience
that I offer myself to the attention of the
House."

Writing to Mr. (afterwards Sir) Isaac
Lyon Goldsmid on April 13, 1830, Lord
Holland suggested "that it might promote
your cause to print a correct copy of the late
triumphant debate in the Commons in the
shape of a pamphlet during holidays. If Mr.
Grant, Sir James Mackintosh, Mr. Macaulay,
8

Introduction

and Dr. Lushington could be prevailed upon
to correct their speeches for that publication,
it would be a valuable manual for all those
who in or out of Parliament are disposed to
urge the facts and reasons in your favour"
{Transactions of the Jewish Historical
Society of England^ iv. 158). This advice
does not seem to have been followed, nor
did Macaulay himself reprint this particular
speech, but it was included in Vizetelly's
two volumes of Macaulay's Speeches, pub-
lished in 1853, much to their author's
indignation. The speech occupies the first
place in Vol. I. In the second volume of
Vizetelly's edition is another speech by
Macaulay, delivered in the House on March
31, 1 84 1, on the Jews' Declaration Bill.
Angered by Vizetelly's publication, Mac-
aulay himself brought out an edition of his
speeches. He included neither of the two
speeches which appear in Vizetelly, but
inserted the more powerful and effective
speech delivered on April 17, 1833.

The production of the essay seems in the

first instance to have been due to Macaulay's

own initiative. For on April 29, 1830, a

little over three weeks after the 1830 debate,

9 B

Introduction

he wrote to Macvey Napier, the editor of
the Edinburgh Review: "If, as I rather fear,
we should be beaten in Parliament this year
about the Jews, a short pungent article on
that question might be useful and taking. It
ought to come within the compass of a single
sheet" {Selection from the Correspondence of the
late Macvey Napier, London, 1 879, p. 80).
In the course of the next few months
Macaulay was strengthened in his conviction
of the probable efficacy of an essay on the
Jewish case by the representations which
were made to him in the interval, apparently
as an indirect result of Lord Holland's original
suggestion for the reprint in pamphlet form
of the debate in the House of Commons on
April 5, 1830. Thus in another letter to
Macvey Napier, dated October 16, 1830, he
stated: "The Jews have been urging me to
say something about their claims ; and I
really think that the question might be dis-
cussed, both on general and on particular
grounds, in a very attractive manner. What
do you think of this plan? " (ibid., pp. 93, 94).
On November 27, 1830, he wrote again:
" I have only a minute to write. I will
send you an article on the Jews next week "
10

Intfoduction

(ibid., p. 97). And finally on December 17,
1830, Macaulay sent the article as promised.
"I send you an article on the Jews. . . .
I am very busy, or I should have sent you
this Jew^ article before. It is short, and
carelessly written, perhaps, as to style, but
certainly as to penmanship " (ibid., p. 98).
The essay appeared in the Edinburgh Review
in the following month, January 1 83 1 , and thus
stands in date between the maiden speech of
1830 and the speech of 1833. In the latter
year the House of Commons passed Mr.
Grant's Bill through all its stages, though it
was not till i860 that the victory was formally
won, after a practical triumph in 1858. It is
curious to note that, in the debate of 1830,
Mr. Grant appealed to the Commons to
concede justice to the Jews promptly, and
not let the matter hang in the balance for
thirty years, as had been done with Catholic
Emancipation. The very interval feared by
Mr. Grant separated his original motion
from its final ratification. Macaulay's essay
played a great part in converting English
public opinion. So popular had this essay
become, so convincing its plea, that it was
regarded as the main statement of the Jewish
II

Introduction

case. Edition after edition of the volume
containing the essay was called for and
exhausted. So late as September 1847, when
the Tory organ, the Quarterly Review^
futilely attempted to set up a reasonable
case against the Jewish claim, the whole of
the argument was directed towards rebutting
Macaulay's essay.

The present edition is a verbal reprint of
Macaulay's own revision. In the notes at-
tention is drawn to some of the modifications
which the author introduced, but a few
words may here be said on one or two
points in which Macaulay's revision is par-
ticularly interesting. Thus, in the speech as
reported in Hansard (3rd Series, Vol. XVII.,
col. 232), there occurs this passage, deleted in
the revision : —

" No charge could be brought against the Jews
of evincing any disposition to attack the Christian
religion, or to offend its professors. It was true
that one imputation of such a nature had lately
been thrown out in that House, but it was entirely
unfounded. He had seen a great deal of the worship
of thefews^ and he had heard a great deal on the
subject from others, and from all that he had seen
and all that he had heard, he was able to say,
without the slightest fear of contradiction, that
there was no part of the Jewish worship which was
12

Introduction

not only not insulting to Christians, but in which
Christians might not, without the least difficulty,
join."

The imputation had been made in the
House by William Cobbett, on March I,
1833. The most noteworthy point is,
however, the sentences which have been
italicised. They give direct evidence that
Macaulay must often have visited the syna-
gogue services.

In the revision of the essay, Macaulay, by
omitting a couple of sentences, laid himself
open to a charge of formal fallacy. Professor
F. C. Montague (in his edition of the Essays,
Vol. I. p. 289) writes: "When Macaulay
asserts the identity of the two propositions —
It is right that some person or persons should
possess political power, and. Some person or
persons must have a right to political power —
he commits an obvious fallacy." But in the
Edinburgh Review Macaulay continued : " It
will hardly be denied that government is a
means for the attainment of an end. If men
have a right to the end, they have a right to
this — that the means shall be such as will
accomplish the end." There is thus no fallacy
in the argument as Macaulay intended it to
13

Introduction

be understood. It is equally difficult to admit
the validity of Professor Montague's further
comment : " Neither is it true in all cases,
and without any qualification, that differences
of religion are absolutely irrelevant to the
bestowal of political power. In some cases
the differences of thought and feeling between
the adherents of different creeds are so many
and so considerable that harmonious co-opera-
tion in the same body politic becomes almost
inconceivable. Whilst Mohammedanism and
Hinduism remain what they are, it is scarcely
conceivable that Mohammedans and Hindus
could really blend in one constituent body
for the choice of a parliament which should
govern India." It remains to be proved by
experience whether the results of Lord
Morley's constitutional reforms will not belie
this fear, and whether the joint admission of
various sects to political responsibility will
not, in the end, mitigate sectarian animosities,
under the impulse of a common striving for
the common good. And Macaulay's point is
missed by Professor Montague. Religion as
such must not be made a bar to admission to
political rights. Macaulay did not argue that
power should be placed in the hands of those
14

Introduction

unfit to use it for the general good. But
assuming the fitness proved, their religion
must not be a ground for exclusion. Every-
one admitted that the fitness had been proved
in the case of the Jews. Inglis, who pre-
ceded Macaulay, and, of course, on the
opposite side, said in the 1833 debate : "He
believed that there was no portion of the
community that furnished a smaller relative
proportion of criminals, or that were better
conducted, than the Jews were." Another
opponent of the Bill, Mr. Halcomb, said :
" He admitted that the Jews were a body
against whose moral character nothing could
be adduced ; that they were good and loyal
citizens of the king." Mr. William Roche
(a Catholic supporter of the Bill) might
well comment on all this : " If, Sir, the Jews
have proved themselves good subjects in this
country, and in all other countries where
they have been domesticated and admitted to
political freedom, that is all we have a right
to look to, leaving to them, as to every other
sect, perfect liberty of conscience in their
spiritual concerns." Of course Professor
Montague does not dispute the validity of
Macaulay's plea as applied to the Jews. He
15

Introduction

describes the success of the arguments in the
essay as complete, and their justice as generally
admitted,

J. Cotter Morison, in his life of Mac-
aulay in the "English Men of Letters"
series, advanced the view "that Macaulay's
natural aptitude was rather oratorical than
literary. ... It is no exaggeration to say
that as an orator he moves in a higher intel-
lectual plane than he does as a writer. . . ,
In his speeches we find him nearly without
exception laying down broad luminous prin-
ciples, based upon reason, and those boundless
stores of historical illustration, from which he
argues with equal brevity and force. It is
interesting to compare his treatment of the
same subject in an essay and a speech. His
speech on the Maynooth grant and his essay
on Mr. Gladstone's Church and State deal
with practically the same question, and few
persons would hesitate to give the preference
to the speech "(pp. 131, 132). Jewish dis-
abilities is another subject which occasioned
both an essay and a speech from Macaulay.
Here, too, the speech, by comparison, must
be judged to be more effective than the
essay. Certainly there is no passage in the
16

Introduction

essay which equals in dignity and strength
and eloquence the following sentences in the
speech : —

"Nobody knows better than my honourable
friend the Member for the University of Oxford
that there is nothing in their national character
which unfits them for the highest duties of citizens.
He knows that, in the infancy of civilisation, when
our island was as savage as New Guinea, when
letters and arts were still unknown to Athens,
when scarcely a thatched hut stood on what was
afterwards the site of Rome, this contemned people
had their fenced cities and cedar palaces, their
splendid Temple, their fleets of merchant ships,
their schools of sacred learning, their great states-
men and soldiers, their natural philosophers, their
historians and their poets. What nation ever con-
tended more manfully against overwhelming odds
for its independence and religion? What nation
ever, in its last agonies, gave such signal proofs of
what may be accomplished by a brave despair?
And if, in the course of many centuries, the op-
pressed descendants of warriors and sages have
degenerated from the qualities of their fathers, if,
while excluded from the blessings of law, and
bowed down under the yoke of slavery, they have
contracted some of the vices of outlaws and of
slaves, shall we consider this as matter of reproach
to them? Shall we not rather consider it as
matter of shame and remorse to ourselves ? Let
us do justice to them. Let us open to them the
door of the House of Commons. Let us open to
them every career in which ability and energy can
be displayed. Till we have done this, let us not
presume to say that there is no genius among the
17 C

Introduction

countrymen of Isaiah, no heroism among the
descendants of the Maccabees" {Infra, pp. 60,
61).

We may at this distance of time prefer the
speech to the essay. Nevertheless, we cannot
but be profoundly grateful for both, and are
bound to recognise and appreciate the deep
influence they both exercised in persuading
public opinion to grant the Jews of England
complete equality before the law with all
other denominations. Macaulay was brought
up in a home which was the headquarters of
the movement for the abolition of slavery.
He carried the lessons of his youth into the
work of his manhood. He championed the
cause of the persecuted and the wronged in
various human relations. But nothing that
he did has raised a more enduring monu-
ment to his name than his enthusiastic and
triumphant advocacy of the cause of Jewish
freedom.

18

CiDil Disabilities of m Jews

FROM

"The Edinburgh Review," /an. 1831

Statement of the Civil Disabilities and Privations
affecting Jews in England

8vo. London : 1829 ^

The distinguished member of the House of
Commons who, towards the close of the late
Parliament, brought forward a proposition for
the relief of the Jews, has given notice of
his intention to renew it.^ The force of
reason, in the last session, carried the measure
through one stage, in spite of the opposition
of power. Reason and power are now on the
same side ; and we have little doubt that
they will conjointly achieve a decisive victory.^
In order to contribute our share to the suc-
cess of just principles, we propose to pass in
review, as rapidly as possible, some of the argu-
ments, or phrases claiming to be arguments,
which have been employed to vindicate a
system full of absurdity and injustice.

The constitution, it is said, is essentially
Christian 5 and therefore to admit Jews to

19

Civil Disabilities of the Jews

office is to destroy the constitution. Nor
is the Jew injured by being excluded from
political power. For no man has any right
to power. A man has a right to his property ;
a man has a right to be protected from per-
sonal injury. These rights the law allows to
the Jew ; and with these rights it would be
atrocious to interfere. But it is a mere
matter of favour to admit any man to poli-
tical power ; and no man can justly com-
plain that he is shut out from it.

We cannot but admire the ingenuity of
this contrivance for shifting the burden of
the proof from those to whom it properly
belongs, and who would, we suspect, find
it rather cumbersome. Surely no Christian
can deny that every human being has a
right to be allowed every gratification which
produces no harm to others, and to be spared
every mortification which produces no good
to others. Is it not a source of mortification
to a class of men that they are excluded from
political power ? If it be, they have, on
Christian principles, a right to be freed from
that mortification, unless it can be shown
that their exclusion is necessary for the
averting of some greater evil. The pre-
sumption is evidently in favour of toleration.
It is for the prosecutor to make out his case.

The strange argument which we arc
20

Macaulay's Essay

considering would prove too much even
for those who advance it. If no man has
a right to political power, then neither Jew
nor Gentile has such a right. The whole
foundation of government is taken away.
But if government be taken away, the pro-
perty and the persons of men are insecure ;
and it is acknowledged that men have a
right to their property and to personal secu-
rity. If it be right that the property of
men should be protected, and if this can
only be done by means of government, then
it must be right that government should
exist. Now there cannot be government
unless some person or persons possess politi-
cal power. Therefore it is right that some
person or persons should possess political
power. That is to say, some person or
persons must have a right to political power.*
It is because men are not in the habit
of considering what the end of government
is, that Catholic disabilities and Jewish dis-
abilities have been suffered to exist so long.
We hear of essentially Protestant govern-
ments and essentially Christian governments,
words which mean just as much as essentially
Protestant cookery, or essentially Christian
horsemanship. Government exists for the
purpose of keeping the peace, for the pur-
pose of compelling us to settle our disputes
21

Civil Disabilities of the Jews

by arbitration instead of settling them by-
blows, for the purpose of compelling us
to supply our wants by industry instead of
supplying them by rapine. This is the only
operation for which the machinery of govern-
ment is peculiarly adapted, the only opera-
tion which wise governments ever propose
to themselves as their chief object. If there
is any class of people who are not interested,
or who do not think themselves interested,
in the security of property and the mainten-
ance of order, that class ought to have no
share of the powers which exist for the pur-
pose of securing property and maintaining
order. But why a man should be less fit to
exercise those powers because he wears a beard,
because he does not eat ham, because he goes
to the synagogue on Saturdays instead of going
to the church on Sundays, we cannot conceive.
The points of difference between Chris-
tianity and Judaism have very much to do
with a man's fitness to be a bishop or a
rabbi. But they have no more to do with
his fitness to be a magistrate, a legislator,
or a minister of finance, than with his fitness
to be a cobbler. Nobody has ever thought
of compelling cobblers to make any declara-
tion on the true faith of a Christian. Any
man would rather have his shoes mended
by a heretical cobbler than by a person who

22

Macaulay's Essay

had subscribed all the thirty-nine articles, but
had never handled an awl. Men act thus,
not because they are indifferent to religion,
but because they do not see what religion
has to do with the mending of their shoes.
Yet religion has as much to do with the
mending of shoes as with the budget and the
army estimates. We have surely had several
signal proofs within the last twenty years
that a very good Christian may be a very
bad Chancellor of the Exchequer.^

But it would be monstrous, say the per-
secutors, that Jews should legislate for a
Christian community. This is a palpable
misrepresentation. What is proposed is,
not that the Jews should legislate for a
Christian community, but that a legislature
composed of Christians and Jews should
legislate for a community composed of
Christians and Jews. On nine hundred
and ninety-nine questions out of a thousand,
on all questions of police, of finance, of civil
and criminal law, of foreign policy, the Jew,
as a Jew, has no interest hostile to that of the
Christian, or even to that of the Churchman.
On questions relating to the ecclesiastical
establishment, the Jew and the Churchman
may differ. But they cannot differ more
widely than the Catholic and the Church-
man, or the Independent and the Church-
23

Civil Disabilities of the Jews

man. The principle that Churchmen ought
to monopolise the whole power of the state
would at least have an intelligible meaning.
The principle that Christians ought to mono-
polise it has no meaning at all. For no
question connected with the ecclesiastical
institutions of the country can possibly-
come before Parliament, with respect to
which there will not be as wide a difference
between Christians as there can be between
any Christian and any Jew.

In fact, the Jews are not now excluded
from political power. They possess it ; and
as long as they are allowed to accumulate
large fortunes, they must possess it. The
distinction which is sometimes made between
civil privileges and political power is a dis-
tinction without a difference. Privileges are
power. Civil and political are synonymous
words, the one derived from the Latin, the
other from the Greek. Nor is this mere
verbal quibbling. If we look for a moment
at the facts of the case, we shall see that
the things are inseparable, or rather identical.

That a Jew should be a judge in a Christian
country would be most shocking. But he
may be a juryman. He may try issues of
fact ; and no harm is done. But if he should
be suffered to try issues of law, there is an
end of the constitution. He may sit in a
24

Macaulay's Essay

box plainly dressed, and return verdicts. But
that he should sit on the bench in a black
gown and white wig, and grant new trials,
would be an abomination not to be thought
of among baptized people. The distinction
is certainly most philosophical.

What power in civilised society is so great
as that of the creditor over the debtor ? If
we take this away from the Jew, wc take
away from him the security of his property.
If we leave it to him, we leave to him a
power more despotic by far than that of the
king and all his cabinet.

It would be impious to let a Jew sit in
Parliament. But a Jew may make money ;
and money may make Members of Parliament.
Gatton and Old Sarum may be the property
of a Hebrew, An elector of Penryn will take
ten pounds from Shylock rather than nine
pounds nineteen shillings and elevenpence
three farthings from Antonio.^ To this no
objection is made. That a Jew should possess
the substance of legislative power, that he
should command eight votes on every division
as if he were the great Duke of Newcastle '^
himself, is exactly as it should be. But that
he should pass the bar and sit down on those
mysterious cushions of green leather, that he
should cry "hear" and "order," and talk
about being on his legs, and being, for one,

25 D

Civil Disabilities of the Jews

free to say this and to say that, would be a
profanation sufficient to bring ruin on the
country.

That a Jew should be privy councillor to a
Christian king would be an eternal disgrace
to the nation. But the Jew may govern the
money-market, and the money-market may
govern the world. The minister may be in
doubt as to his scheme of finance till he has
been closeted with a Jew. A congress of
sovereigns may be forced to summon the Jew
to their assistance. The scrawl of the Jew
on the back of a piece of paper may be worth
more than the royal word of three kings, or
the national faith of three new American
republics. But that he should put Right
Honourable before his name would be the
most frightful of national calamities.

It was in this way that some of our poli-
ticians reasoned about the Irish Catholics.
The Catholics ought to have no political
power. The sun of England is set for ever
if the Catholics exercise political power. Give
the Catholics everything else ; but keep poli-
tical power from them. These wise men
did not see that, when everything else had
been given, political power had been given.
They continued to repeat their cuckoo song,
when it was no longer a question whether
Catholics should have political power or not,
26

Macaulay*s Essay

when a Catholic Association bearded the
Parliament, when a Catholic agitator exer-
cised infinitely more authority than the Lord
Lieutenant.^

If it is our duty as Christians to exclude
the Jews from political power, it must be our
duty to treat them as our ancestors treated
them, to murder them, and banish them, and
rob them. For in that way, and in that way
alone, can we really deprive them of political
power. If we do not adopt this course, we
may take away the shadow, but we must
leave them the substance. We may do
enough to pain and irritate them ; but we
shall not do enough to secure ourselves from
danger, if danger really exists. Where wealth
is, there power must inevitably be.

The English Jews, we are told, are not
Englishmen. They are a separate people,
living locally in this island, but living morally
and politically in communion with their breth-
ren who are scattered over all the world.
An English Jew looks on a Dutch or a
Portuguese Jew as his countryman, and on
an English Christian as a stranger. This
want of patriotic feeling, it is said, renders
a Jew unfit to exercise political functions.

The argument has in it something plau-
sible ; but a close examination shows it to be
quite unsound. Even if the alleged facts are
27

Civil Disabilities of the Jews

admitted, still the Jews are not the only-
people who have preferred their sect to their
country. The feeling of patriotism, when
society is in a healthful state, springs up by
a natural and inevitable association, in the
minds of citizens who know that they owe
all their comforts and pleasures to the bond
which unites them in one community. But,
under a partial and oppressive government,
these associations cannot acquire that strength
which they have in a better state of things.
Men are compelled to seek from their party
that protection which they ought to receive
from their country, and they, by a natural
consequence, transfer to their party that
affection which they would otherwise have
felt for their country. The Huguenots of
France called in the help of England against
their Catholic kings. The Catholics of
France called in the help of Spain against a
Huguenot king. Would it be fair to infer,
that at present the French Protestants would
wish to see their religion made dominant by
the help of a Prussian or English army ?
Surely not. And why is it that they are not
willing, as they formerly were willing, to
sacrifice the interests of their country to
the interests of their religious persuasion ?
The reason is obvious : they were persecuted
then, and are not persecuted now. The
28

Macaulay's Essay

English Puritans, under Charles the First,
prevailed on the Scotch to invade England.
Do the Protestant Dissenters of our time
w^ish to see the Church put dow^n by an
invasion of foreign Calvinists ? If not, to
vv^hat cause are we to attribute the change ?
Surely to this, that the Protestant Dissenters
are far better treated now than in the seven-
teenth century. Some of the most illustrious
public men that England ever produced were
inclined to take refuge from the tyranny of
Laud in North America.^ Was this because
Presbyterians and Independents are incapable
of loving their country ? But it is idle to
multiply instances. Nothing is so offensive
to a man who knows anything of history or
of human nature as to hear those who exer-
cise the powers of government accuse any
sect of foreign attachments. If there be
any proposition universally true in politics it
is this, that foreign attachments are the fruit
of domestic misrule. It has always been the
trick of bigots to make their subjects miserable
at home, and then to complain that they look
for relief abroad ; to divide society, and to
wonder that it is not united ; to govern as if
a section of the state were the whole, and to
censure the other sections of the state for their
want of patriotic spirit. If the Jews have not
felt towards England like children, it is because
29

Civil Disabilities of the Jews

she has treated them like a stepmother.
There is no feeling which more certainly
develops itself in the minds of men living
under tolerably good government than the
feeling of patriotism. Since the beginning
of the world, there never was any nation, or
any large portion of any nation, not cruelly
oppressed, which was wholly destitute of that
feeling. To make it, therefore, ground of
accusation against a class of men, that they
are not patriotic, is the most vulgar legerde-
main of sophistry. It is the logic which the
wolf employs against the lamb. It is to
accuse the mouth of the stream of poisoning
the source. 1°

If the English Jews really felt a deadly
hatred to England, if the weekly prayer of
their synagogues were that all the curses
denounced by Ezekiel on Tyre and Egypt
might fall on London, if, in their solemn
feasts, they called down blessings on those
who should dash their children to pieces on
the stones, still, we say, their hatred to their
countrymen would not be more intense than
that which sects of Christians have often
borne to each other. But in fact the feeling
of the Jews is not such. It is precisely
what, in the situation in which they are
placed, we should expect it to be. They are
treated far better than the French Protestants
30

Macaulay^s Essay

were treated in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, or than our Puritans were treated
in the time of Laud. They, therefore, have
no rancour against the government or against
their countrymen. It will not be denied
that they are far better affected to the state
than the followers of Coligni or Vane.^^
But they are not so well treated as the
dissenting sects of Christians are now treated
in England ; and on this account, and, we
firmly believe, on this account alone, they
have a more exclusive spirit. Till we have
carried the experiment farther, we are not
entitled to conclude that they cannot be
made Englishmen altogether. The statesman
who treats them as aliens, and then abuses
them for not entertaining all the feelings
of natives, is as unreasonable as the tyrant
who punished their fathers for not making
bricks without straw.

Rulers must not be suffered thus to absolve
themselves of their solemn responsibility. It
does not lie in their mouths to say that a
sect is not patriotic. It is their business to
make it patriotic. History and reason clearly
indicate the means. The English Jews are,
as far as we can see, precisely what our
government has made them. They are pre-
cisely what any sect, what any class of men,
treated as they have been treated, would

31

Civil Disabilities of the Jews

have been. If all the red-haired people in
Europe had, during centuries, been outraged
and oppressed, banished from this place, im-
prisoned in that, deprived of their money,
deprived of their teeth, convicted of the most
improbable crimes on the feeblest evidence,
dragged at horses' tails, hanged, tortured,
burned alive ; if, when manners became
milder, they had still been subject to debasing
restrictions and exposed to vulgar insults,
locked up in particular streets in some
countries, pelted and ducked by the rabble
in others, excluded everywhere from magis-
tracies and honours, what would be the
patriotism of gentlemen with red hair ? And
if, under such circumstances, a proposition
were made for admitting red-haired men to
office, how striking a speech might an
eloquent admirer of our old institutions
deliver against so revolutionary a measure !
"These men," he might say, "scarcely
consider themselves as Englishmen. They
think a red-haired Frenchman or a red-haired
German more closely connected with them
than a man with brown hair born in their
own parish. If a foreign sovereign patronises
red hair, they love him better than their own
native king. They are not Englishmen :
they cannot be Englishmen : nature has for-
bidden it : experience proves it to be im-
32

Macaulay's Essay

possible. Right to political power they
have none ; for no man has a right to
political power. Let them enjoy personal
security ; let their property be under the
protection of the law. But if they ask for
leave to exercise power over a community
of which they are only half members, a
community the constitution of which is
essentially dark-haired, let us answer them in
the words of our wise ancestors, Nolumus
leges Anglice mutari." ^^

But it is said, the Scriptures declare that
the Jews are to be restored to their own
country ; and the whole nation looks forward
to that restoration. They are, therefore, not
so deeply interested as others in the prosperity
of England. It is not their home, but merely
the place of their sojourn, the house of their
bondage. This argument, which first ap-
peared in the Times newspaper,^^ and which
has attracted a degree of attention proportioned
not so much to its own intrinsic force as to
the general talent with which that journal is
conducted, belongs to a class of sophisms by
which the most hateful persecutions may
easily be justified. To charge men with
practical consequences which they themselves
deny is disingenuous in controversy ; it is
atrocious in government. The doctrine of
predestination, in the opinion of many people,
33 E

Civil Disabilities of the Jews

tends to make those who hold it utterly
immoral. And certainly it would seem that
a man who believes his eternal destiny to be
already irrevocably fixed is likely to indulge
his passions without restraint and to neglect
his religious duties. If he is an heir of wrath,
his exertions must be unavailing. If he is
preordained to life, they must be superfluous.
But would it be wise to punish every man
who holds the higher doctrines of Calvinism,
as if he had actually committed all those
crimes which we know some Antinomians to
have committed ? Assuredly not. The fact
notoriously is that there are many Calvinists
as moral in their conduct as any Arminian,
and many Arminians as loose as any Calvinist.
It is altogether impossible to reason from
the opinions which a man professes to his
feelings and his actions ; and in fact no person
is ever such a fool as to reason thus, except
when he wants a pretext for persecuting
his neighbours. A Christian is commanded,
under the strongest sanctions, to be just in all
his dealings. Yet to how many of the twenty-
four millions of professing Christians in these
islands would any man in his senses lend a
thousand pounds without security ? A man
who should act, for one day, on the supposition
that all the people about him were influenced
by the religion which they professed, would
34

Macaulay's Essay-
find himself ruined before night ; and no man
ever does act on that supposition in any of the
ordinary concerns of life, in borrowing, in
lending, in buying, or in selling. But when
any of our fellow-creatures are to be oppressed,
the case is different. Then we represent
those motives which we know to be so feeble
for good as omnipotent for evil. Then we
lay to the charge of our victims all the vices
and follies to which their doctrines, however
remotely, seem to tend. We forget that the
same weakness, the same laxity, the same dis-
position to prefer the present to the future,
which make men worse than a good religion,
make them better than a bad one.

It was in this way that our ancestors
reasoned, and that some people in our time
still reason, about the Catholics. A Papist
believes himself bound to obey the pope.
The pope has issued a bull deposing Queen
Elizabeth. Therefore every Papist will treat
her grace as an usurper. Therefore every
Papist is a traitor. Therefore every Papist
ought to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. To
this logic we owe some of the most hateful
laws that ever disgraced our history. Surely
the answer lies on the surface. The Church
of Rome may have commanded these men to
treat the queen as an usurper. But she has
commanded them to do many other things
35

Civil Disabilities of the Jews

which they have never done. She enjoins
her priests to observe strict purity. You are
always taunting them with their licentiousness.
She commands all her followers to fast often,
to be charitable to the poor, to take no interest
for money, to fight no duels, to see no plays.
Do they obey these injunctions ? If it be the
fact that very few of them strictly observe her
precepts, when her precepts are opposed to their
passions and interests, may not loyalty, may
not humanity, may not the love of ease, may
not the fear of death, be sufficient to prevent
them from executing those wicked orders which
the Church of Rome has issued against the
sovereign of England ? When we know that
many of these people do not care enough for
their religion to go without beef on a Friday
for it, why should we think that they will run
the risk of being racked and hanged for it ?

People are now reasoning about the Jews
as our fathers reasoned about the Papists.
The law which is inscribed on the walls of
the synagogues prohibits covetousness.^^ But
if we were to say that a Jew mortgagee would
not foreclose because God had commanded
him not to covet his neighbour's house, every-
body would think us out of our wits. Yet
it passes for an argument to say that a Jew
will take no interest in the prosperity of the
country in which he lives, that he will not
36

Macaulay's Essay

care how bad its laws and police may be, how
heavily it may be taxed, how often it may be
conquered and given up to spoil, because God
has promised that, by some unknown means
and at some undetermined time, perhaps ten
thousand years hence, the Jews shall migrate
to Palestine. Is not this the most profound
ignorance of human nature ? Do we not
know that what is remote and indefinite affects
men far less than what is near and certain ?
The argument, too, applies to Christians as
strongly as to Jews. The Christian believes
as well as the Jew, that at some future period
the present order of things will come to an
end. Nay, many Christians believe that the
Messiah will shortly establish a kingdom on
the earth, and reign visibly over all its in-
habitants. Whether this doctrine be ortho-
dox or not we shall not here inquire. The
number of people who hold it is very much
greater than the number of Jews residing in
England. Many of those who hold it are
distinguished by rank, wealth, and ability. It
is preached from pulpits both of the Scottish
and of the English Church. Noblemen and
Membersof Parliament have written in defence
of it. Now wherein does this doctrine differ,
as far as its political tendency is concerned,
from the doctrine of the Jews ? If a Jew is
unfit to legislate for us because he believes that
37

Civil Disabilities of the Jews

he or his remote descendants will be removed
to Palestine, can we safely open the House of
Commons to a fifth-monarchy man, who
expects that before this generation shall pass
away, all the kingdoms of the earth will be
swallowed up in one divine empire ?

Does a Jew engage less eagerly than a
Christian in any competition which the law
leaves open to him ? Is he less active and
regular in his business than his neighbours ?
Does he furnish his house meanly, because he
is a pilgrim and sojourner in the land ? Does
the expectation of being restored to thecountry
of his fathers make him insensible to the
fluctuations of the stock-exchange ? Does he,
in arranging his private affairs, ever take into
the account the chance of his migrating to
Palestine ? If not, why are we to suppose
that feelings which never influence his deal-
ings as a merchant, or his dispositions as a
testator, will acquire a boundless influence
over him as soon as he becomes a magistrate
or a legislator ?

There is another argument which we
would not willingly treat with levity, and
which yet we scarcely know how to treat
seriously. Scripture, it is said, is full of ter-
rible denunciations against the Jews. It is
foretold that they are to be wanderers. Is
it then right to give them a home ? It is

38

Macaulay's Essay

foretold that they are to be oppressed. Can
we with propriety suffer them to be rulers ?
To admit them to the rights of citizens is
manifestly to insult the Divine oracles.

We allow that to falsify a prophecy in-
spired by Divine Wisdom would be a most
atrocious crime. It is, therefore, a happy
circumstance for our frail species, that it is
a crime which no man can possibly commit.
If we admit the Jews to seats in Parliament,
we shall, by so doing, prove that the pro-
phecies in question, whatever they may mean,
do not mean that the Jews shall be excluded
from Parliament.

In fact it is already clear that the pro-
phecies do not bear the meaning put upon
them by the respectable persons whom we
are now answering. In France and in the
United States the Jews are already admitted to
all the rights of citizens. A prophecy, there-
fore, which should mean that the Jews would
never, during the course of their wander-
ings, be admitted to all the rights of citizens
in the places of their sojourn, would be a false
prophecy. This, therefore, is not the meaning
of the prophecies of Scripture.

But we protest altogether against the
practice of confounding prophecy with pre-
cept, of setting up predictions which are
often obscure against a morality which is
39

Civil Disabilities of the Jews

always clear. If actions are to be considered
as just and good merely because they have
been predicted, what action was ever more
laudable than that crime which our bigots
are now, at the end of eighteen centuries,
urging us to avenge on the Jews, that crime
which made the earth shake and blotted out
the sun from heaven ? The same reasoning
which is now employed to vindicate the
disabilities imposed on our Hebrew country-
men will equally vindicate the kiss of Judas
and the judgment of Pilate. "The son of
man goeth, as it is written of him ; but woe
to that man by whom the son of man is
betrayed." ^^ And woe to those who, in any
age or in any country, disobey his benevolent
commands under pretence of accomplishing
his predictions. If this argument justifies
the laws now existing against the Jews,
it justifies equally all the cruelties which
have ever been committed against them, the
sweeping edicts of banishment and confisca-
tion, the dungeon, the rack, and the slow
fire. How can we excuse ourselves for
leaving property to people who are to " serve
their enemies in hunger, and in thirst, and
in nakedness, and in want of all things " ; for
giving protection to the persons of those who
are to " fear day and night, and to have none
assurance of their life " ; for not seizing on the
40

Macaulay's Essay

children of a race whose " sons and daughters
are to be given unto another people " ? "

We have not so learned the doctrines of
him w^ho commanded us to love our neigh-
bour as ourselves, and who, when he was
called upon to explain what he meant by a
neighbour, selected as an example a heretic
and an alien.^' Last year, we remember, it
was represented by a pious writer in the
John Bull newspaper,^^ and by some other
equally fervid Christians, as a monstrous
indecency, that the measure for the relief
of the Jews should be brought forward in
Passion week. One of these humourists
ironically recommended that it should be
read a second time on Good Friday. We
should have had no objection ; nor do we
believe that the day could be commemorated
in a more worthy manner. We know of no
day fitter for terminating long hostilities, and
repairing cruel wrongs, than the day on
which the religion of mercy was founded.
We know of no day fitter for blotting out
from the statute-book the last traces of intoler-
ance than the day on which the spirit of
intolerance produced the foulest of all judicial
murders, the day on which the list of the
victims of intolerance, that noble list wherein
Socrates and More are enrolled, was glorified
by a yet greater and holier name.

41 F

A SPEECH

DELIVERED IN A COMMITTEE OF THE
WHOLE HOUSE OF COMMONS

On the \*]th of April 1833.

On the seventeenth of April, 1833, the House of
Commons resolved itself into a Committee to
consider of the civil disabilities of the Jews. Mr.
Warburton took the chair. Mr. Robert Grant
moved the following resolution : —

"That it is the opinion of this Committee
that it is expedient to remove all civil dis-
abilities at present existing with respect to
His Majesty's subjects professing the Jewish
religion, with the like exceptions as are
provided with respect to His Majesty's
subjects professing the Roman Catholic
religion."

The resolution passed without a division, after a
warm debate, in the course of which the following
Speech was made : —

Mr. Warburton, — I recollect, and my
honourable friend the Member for the
University of Oxford ^^ will recollect, that
when this subject was discussed three years
ago, it was remarked, by one whom we both
42

Macaulay's Speech

loved and whom we both regret, that the
strength of the case of the Jews was a serious
inconvenience to their advocate, for that it
was hardly possible to make a speech for
them without wearying the audience by
repeating truths which were universally
admitted. If Sir James Mackintosh felt this
difficulty when the question was first brought
forward in this House, I may well despair of
being able now to offer any arguments which
have a pretence to novelty.^o

My honourable friend, the Member for the
University of Oxford, began his speech by
declaring that he had no intention of calling
in question the principles of religious liberty.
He utterly disclaims persecution, that is to
say, persecution as defined by himself. It
would, in his opinion, be persecution to hang
a Jew, or to flay him, or to draw his teeth,
or to imprison him, or to fine him ; for
every man who conducts himself peaceably
has a right to his life and his limbs, to his
personal liberty and his property. But it
is not persecution, says my honourable friend,
to exclude any individual or any class from
office ; for nobody has a right to office : in
every country official appointments must be
subject to such regulations as the supreme
authority may choose to make ; nor can any
such regulations be reasonably complained of

43

Civil Disabilities of the Jews

by any member of the society as unjust. He
who obtains an office obtains it, not as matter
of right, but as matter of favour. He who
does not obtain an office is not wronged ;
he is only in that situation in which the
vast majority of every community must
necessarily be. There are in the United
Kingdom five and twenty million Christians
without places ; and, if they do not com-
plain, why should five and twenty thousand
Jews complain of being in the same case ?
In this way my honourable friend has con-
vinced himself that, as it would be most
absurd in him and me to say that we are
wronged because we are not Secretaries of
State, so it is most absurd in the Jews to
say that they are wronged because they
are, as a people, excluded from public
employment.

Now, surely my honourable friend cannot
have considered to what conclusions his
reasoning leads. Those conclusions are so
monstrous that he would, I am certain,
shrink from them. Does he really mean
that it would not be wrong in the legislature
to enact that no man should be a judge
unless he weighed twelve stone, or that no
man should sit in Parliament unless he were
six feet high ? We are about to bring in
a bill for the government of India; Suppose
44

Macaulay's Speech

that we were to insert in that bill a clause
providing that no graduate of the University
of Oxford should be Governor-General or
Governor of any Presidency, would not
my honourable friend cry out against such
a clause as most unjust to the learned body
which he represents ? And would he think
himself sufficiently answered by being told,
in his own words, that the appointment to
office is a mere matter of favour, and that
to exclude an individual or a class from
office is no injury ? Surely, on considera-
tion, he must admit that official appointments
ought not to be subject to regulations purely
arbitrary, to regulations for which no reason
can be given but mere caprice, and that those
who would exclude any class from public
employment are bound to show some special
reason for the exclusion.

My honourable friend has appealed to us
as Christians. Let me then ask him how
he understands that great commandment
which comprises the law and the prophets.
Can we be said to do unto others as we
would that they should do unto us if we
wantonly inflict on them even the smallest
pain ? As Christians, surely we are bound
to consider, first, whether, by excluding the
Jews from all public trust, we give them
pain ; and, secondly, whether it be necessary
45

Civil Disabilities of the Jews

to give them that pain in order to avert some
greater evil. That by excluding them from
public trust we inflict pain on them my
honourable friend will not dispute. As a
Christian, therefore, he is bound to relieve
them from that pain, unless he can show,
what I am sure he has not yet shown, that
it is necessary to the general good that they
should continue to suffer.

But where, he says, are you to stop, if
once you admit into the House of Commons
people who deny the authority of the Gospels ?
Will you let in a Mussulman ? Will you
let in a Parsee ? Will you let in a Hindoo,
who worships a lump of stone with seven
heads ? I will answer my honourable friend's
question by another. Where does he mean
to stop ? Is he ready to roast unbelievers
at slow fires ? If not, let him tell us why :
and I will engage to prove that his reason is
just as decisive against the intolerance which
he thinks a duty, as against the intolerance
which he thinks a crime. Once admit that
we are bound to inflict pain on a man be-
cause he is not of our religion ; and where
are you to stop ? Why stop at the point
fixed by my honourable friend rather than
at the point fixed by the honourable Member
for 01dham,2i who would make the Jews
incapable ot holding land ? And why stop
46

Macaulay*s Speech

at the point fixed by the honourable Member
for Oldham rather than at the point which
would have been fixed by a Spanish Inquisitor
of the sixteenth century? When once you
enter on a course of persecution, I defy you
to find any reason for making a halt till
you have reached the extreme point. When
my honourable friend tells us that he will
allow the Jews to possess property to any
amount, but that he will not allow them to
possess the smallest political power, he holds
contradictory language. Property is power.
The honourable Member for Oldham reasons
better than my honourable friend. The
honourable member for Oldham sees very
clearly that it is impossible to deprive a
man of political power if you suffer him
to be the proprietor of half a county, and
therefore very consistently proposes to con-
fiscate the landed estates of the Jews. But
even the honourable Member for Oldham
does not go far enough. He has not pro-
posed to confiscate the personal property of
the Jews. Yet it is perfectly certain that
any Jew who has a million may easily make
himself very important in the state. By
such steps we pass from official power to
landed property, and from landed property
to personal property, and from property to
liberty, and from liberty to life. In truth,

47

Civil Disabilities of the Jews

those persecutors who use the rack and the
stake have much to say for themselves.
They are convinced that their end is good ;
and it must be admitted that they employ
means which are not unlikely to attain the
end. Religious dissent has repeatedly been
put down by sanguinary persecution. In
that way the Albigenses were put down.^^
In that way Protestantism was suppressed
in Spain and Italy, so that it has never since
reared its head. But I defy anybody to
produce an instance in which disabilities such
as we are now considering have produced any
other effect than that of making the suiFerers
angry and obstinate. My honourable friend
should either persecute to some purpose, or
not persecute at all. He dislikes the word
persecution, I know. He will not admit
that the Jews are persecuted. And yet I
am confident that he would rather be sent
to the King's Bench Prison for three months,
or be fined a hundred pounds, than be sub-
ject to the disabilities under which the Jews
lie. How can he then say that to impose
such disabilities is not persecution, and that
to fine and imprison is persecution ? All his
reasoning consists in drawing arbitrary lines.
What he does not wish to inflict he calls
persecution. What he does wish to inflict
he will not call persecution. What he takes

48

Macaulay's Speech

from the Jews he calls political power.
What he is too good-natured to take from
the Jews he will not call political power.
The Jew must not sit in Parliament ; but
he may be the proprietor of all the ten-
.)ound houses in a borough.^^ He may have
more fifty-pound tenants than any peer in
the kingdom. He may give the voters treats
to please their palates, and hire bands of
gipsies to break their heads, as if he were
a Christian and a Marquess. All the rest
of the system is of a piece. The Jew may
be a juryman, but not a judge. He may
decide issues of fact, but not issues of law.
He may give a hundred thousand pounds
damages ; but he may not in the most trivial
case grant a new trial. He may rule the
money-market : he may influence the ex-
changes : he may be summoned to congresses
of Emperors and Kings. Great potentates,
instead of negotiating a loan with him by
tying him in a chair and pulling out his
grinders, may treat with him as with a great
potentate, and may postpone the declaring
of war or the signing of a treaty till they
have conferred with him. All this is as it
should be : but he must not be a Privy
Councillor. He must not be called Right
Honourable, for that is political power. And
who is it that we are trying to cheat in this
49 G

Civil Disabilities of the Jews

way ? Even Omniscience. Yes, Sir ; we
have been gravely told that the Jews are
under the divine displeasure, and that if
we give them political power, God will visit
us in judgment. Do we then think that
God cannot distinguish between substance
and form ? Does not He know that, while
we withhold from the Jews the semblance
and name of political power, we suffer them
to possess the substance ? The plain truth
is that my honourable friend is drawn in
one direction by his opinions, and in a
directly opposite direction by his excellent
heart. He halts between two opinions. He
tries to make a compromise between principles
which admit of no compromise. He goes a
certain way in intolerance. Then he stops,
without being able to give a reason for stop-
ping. But I know the reason. It is his
humanity. Those who formerly dragged
the Jew at a horse's tail, and singed his
beard with blazing furze-bushes, were much
worse men than my honourable friend ; but
they were more consistent than he.

It has been said that it would be monstrous
to see a Jew judge try a man for blasphemy.^^
In my opinion it is monstrous to see any
judge try a man for blasphemy under the
present law. But, if the law on that subject
were in a sound state, I do not' see why a
50

Macaulay's Speech

conscientious Jew might not try a blasphemer.
Every man, I think, ought to be at liberty to
discuss the evidences of religion ; but no man
ought to be at liberty to force on the un-
vv^illing ears and eyes of others sounds and
sights which must cause annoyance and
irritation. The distinction is clear. I think
it wrong to punish a man for selling Paine's
"Age of Reason" in a back-shop to those
who choose to buy, or for deHvering a
Deistical lecture in a private room to those
who choose to listen. But if a man exhibits
at a window in the Strand a hideous cari-
cature of that which is an object of awe and
adoration to nine hundred and ninety-nine
out of every thousand of the people who pass
up and down that great thoroughfare ; if a
man in a place of public resort applies oppro-
brious epithets to names held in reverence
by all Christians ; such a man ought, in my
opinion, to be severely punished, not for
differing from us in opinion, but for com-
mitting a nuisance which gives us pain and
disgust. He is no more entitled to outrage
our feelings by obtruding his impiety on us,
and to say that he is exercising his right
of discussion, than to establish a yard for
butchering horses close to our houses, and to
say that he is exercising his right of property,
or to run naked up and down the public
51

Civil Disabilities of the Jews

streets, and to say that he is exercising his right
of locomotion. He has a right of discussion,
no doubt, as he has a right of property and a
right of locomotion. But he must use all his
rights so as not to infringe the rights of others.

These, Sir, are the principles on which I
would frame the law of blasphemy ; and if
the law were so framed, I am at a loss to
understand why a Jew might not enforce it
as well as a Christian. I am not a Roman
Catholic ; but if I were a judge at Malta, I
should have no scruple about punishing a
bigoted Protestant who should burn the Pope
in effigy before the eyes of thousands of
Roman Catholics. I am not a Mussulman ;
but if I were a judge in India, I should have
no scruple about punishing a Christian who
should pollute a mosque. Why, then, should
I doubt that a Jew, raised by his ability,
learning, and integrity to the judicial bench,
would deal properly with any person who,
in a Christian country, should insult the
Christian religion ?

But, says my honourable friend, it has
been prophesied that the Jews are to be
wanderers on the face of the earth, and that
they are not to mix on terms of equality
with the people of the countries in which they
sojourn. Now, Sir, I am confident that I
can demonstrate that this is not the sense of
52

Macaulay*s Speech

any prophecy which is part of Holy Writ.
For it is an undoubted fact that, in the
United States of America, Jewish citizens do
possess all the privileges possessed by Christian
citizens. Therefore, if the prophecies mean
that the Jews never shall, during their wan-
derings, be admitted by other nations to
equal participation of political rights, the
prophecies are false. But the prophecies are
certainly not false. Therefore their meaning
cannot be that which is attributed to them
by my honourable friend.

Another objection which has been made to
the motion is that the Jews look forward to
the coming of a great deliverer, to their re-
turn to Palestine, to the rebuilding of their
Temple, to the revival of their ancient
worship, and that therefore they will always
consider England, not their country, but
merely as their place of exile. But, surely,
Sir, it would be the grossest ignorance of
human nature to imagine that the anticipation
of an event which is to happen at some time
altogether indefinite, of an event which has
been vainly expected during many centuries,
of an event which even those who confidently
expect that it will happen do not confidently
expect that they or their children or their
grandchildren will see, can ever occupy the
minds of men to such a degree as to make

53

Civil Disabilities of the Jews

them regardless of what is near and present
and certain. Indeed Christians, as well as
Jews, believe that the existing order of
things will come to an end. Many Chris-
tians believe that Jesus will visibly reign on
earth during a thousand years. Expositors of
prophecy have gone so far as to fix the year
when the Millennial period is to commence.
The prevailing opinion is, I think, in favour
of the year i866; but, according to some
commentators, the time is close at hand.
Are we to exclude all millenarians from
Parliament and office, on the ground that
they are impatiently looking forward to the
miraculous monarchy which is to supersede
the present dynasty and the present con-
stitution of England, and that therefore they
cannot be heartily loyal to King William ?

In one important point. Sir, my honourable
friend, the Member for the University of
Oxford, must acknowledge that the Jewish
religion is of all erroneous religions the least
mischievous. There is not the slightest
chance that the Jewish religion will spread.
The Jew does not wish to make proselytes.
He may be said to reject them.^^ He thinks
it almost culpable in one who does not belong
to his race to presume to belong to his religion.
It is therefore not strange that a conversion
from Christianity to Judaism should be a

54

Macaulay's Speech

rarer occurrence than a total eclipse of the
sun. There was one distinguished convert
in the last century, Lord George Gordon ;
and the history of his conversion deserves
to be remembered.2® For if ever there vv^as a
proselyte of vi^hom a proselytising sect would
have been proud, it was Lord George ; not
only because he was a man of high birth
and rank ; not only because he had been a
member of the legislature ; but also because
he had been distinguished by the intolerance,
nay, the ferocity, of his zeal for his own
form of Christianity. But was he allured
into the synagogue ? Was he even welcomed
to it ? No, Sir ; he was coldly and reluctantly
permitted to share the reproach and suffering
of the chosen people ; but he was sternly
shut out from their privileges. He under-
went the painful rite which their law enjoins.
But when, on his death-bed, he begged hard
to be buried among them according to their
ceremonial, he was told that his request could
not be granted. I understand that cry of
" Hear." It reminds me that one of the
arguments against this motion is that the
Jews are an unsocial people, that they draw
close to each other, and stand aloof from
strangers. Really, Sir, it is amusing to
compare the manner in which the question
of Catholic emancipation was argued formerly
55

Civil Disabilities of the Jews

by some gentlemen with the manner in which
the question of Jew emancipation is argued
by the same gentlemen now. When the
question was about Catholic emancipation,
the cry was, " See how restless, how versatile,
how encroaching, how insinuating, is the
spirit of the Church of Rome. See how her
priests compass earth and sea to make one
proselyte, how indefatigably they toil, how
attentively they study the weak and strong
parts of every character, how skilfully they
employ literature, arts, sciences, as engines
for the propagation of their faith. You find
them in every region and under every dis-
guise, collating manuscripts in the Bodleian,
fixing telescopes in the observatory of Pekin,
teaching the use of the plough and the
spinning wheel to the savages of Paraguay.
Will you give power to the members of a
Church so busy, so aggressive, so insatiable ? "
Well, now the question is about people who
never try to seduce any stranger to join them,
and who do not wish anybody to be of their
faith who is not also of their blood. And
now you exclaim, "Will you give power to
the members of a sect which remains sullenly
apart from other sects, which does not invite,
nay, which hardly even admits neophytes ? "
The truth is, that bigotry will never want
a pretence. Whatever the sect be which it
56

Macaulay's Speech

is proposed to tolerate, the peculiarities of that
sect will, for the time, be pronounced by
intolerant men to be the most odious and
dangerous that can be conceived. As to the
Jews, that they are unsocial as respects re-
ligion is true ; and so much the better : for,
surely, as Christians, we cannot wish that
they should bestir themselves to pervert us
from our own faith. But that the Jews
would be unsocial members of the civil
community, if the civil community did its
duty by them, has never been proved. My
right honourable friend who made the
motion which we are discussing has pro-
duced a great body of evidence to show that
they have been grossly misrepresented ; ^7
and that evidence has not been refuted by
my honourable friend the Member for the
University of Oxford. But what if it were
true that the Jews are unsocial ? What if
it were true that they do not regard England
as their country ? Would not the treatment
which they have undergone explain and
excuse their antipathy to the society in
which they live ? Has not similar antipathy
often been felt by persecuted Christians to
the society which persecuted them ? While
the bloody code of Elizabeth was enforced
against the English Roman Catholics, what
was the patriotism of Roman Catholics?
57 H

Civil Disabilities of the Jews

Oliver Cromwell said that in his time
they were Espaniolised. At a later period
it might have been said that they were
Gallicised. It was the same with the
Calvinists. What more deadly enemies had
France in the days of Louis the Fourteenth
than the persecuted Huguenots ? But would
any rational man infer from these facts that
either the Roman Catholic as such, or the
Calvinist as such, is incapable of loving the
land of his birth ? If England were now
invaded by Roman Catholics, how many
English Roman Catholics would go over to
the invader ? If France were now attacked
by a Protestant enemy, how many French
Protestants would lend him help ? Why not
try what effect would be produced on the
Jews by that tolerant policy which has made
the English Roman Catholic a good Eng-
lishman and the French Calvinist a good
Frenchman ? ^^

Another charge has been brought against
the Jews, not by my honourable friend the
Member for the University of Oxford — he
has too much learning and too much good
feeling to make such a charge — but by the
honourable Member for Oldham, who has,
I am sorry to see, quitted his place. The
honourable Member for Oldham tells us that
the Jews are naturally a mean race, a sordid

58

Macaulay's Speech

race, a money-getting race ; that they are
averse to all honourable callings ; that they
neither sow nor reap ; that they have neither
flocks nor herds ; that usury is the only
pursuit for which they are fit ; that they are
destitute of all elevated and amiable senti-
ments. Such, Sir, has in every age been
the reasoning of bigots. They never fail to
plead in justification of persecution the vices
which persecution has engendered. Eng-
land has been to the Jews less than half a
country ; and we revile them because they
do not feel for England more than a half
patriotism. We treat them as slaves, and
wonder that they do not regard us as
brethren. We drive them to mean occu-
pations, and then reproach them for not
embracing honourable professions. We long
forbade them to possess land ; and we com-
plain that they chiefly occupy themselves in
trade. We shut them out from all the paths
of ambition ; and then we despise them for
taking refuge in avarice. During many ages
we have, in all our dealings with them,
abused our immense superiority of force ; and
then we are disgusted because they have re-
course to that cunning which is the natural
and universal defence of the weak against
the violence of the strong. But were they
always a mere money-changing, money-

59

Civil Disabilities of the Jews

getting, money-hoarding race ? Nobody
knows better than my honourable friend the
Member for the University of Oxford that
there is nothing in their national character
which unfits them for the highest duties of
citizens. He knows that, in the infancy of
civilisation, when our island was as savage as
New Guinea, when letters and arts were
still unknown to Athens, when scarcely a
thatched hut stood on what was afterwards
the site of Rome, this contemned people had
their fenced cities and cedar palaces, their
splendid Temple, their fleets of merchant
ships, their schools of sacred learning, their
great statesmen and soldiers, their natural
philosophers, their historians and their poets.
What nation ever contended more manfully
against overwhelming odds for its indepen-
dence and religion ? What nation ever, in
its last agonies, gave such signal proofs of
what may be accomplished by a brave
despair ? And if, in the course of many
centuries, the oppressed descendants of war-
riors and sages have degenerated from the
qualities of their fathers, if, while excluded
from the blessings of law, and bowed down
under the yoke of slavery, they have con-
tracted some of the vices of outlaws and
of slaves, shall we consider this, as matter
of reproach to them ? Shall we not rather
60

Macaulay's Speech

consider it as matter of shame and remorse
to ourselves ? Let us do justice to them.
Let us open to them the door of the House
of Commons, Let us open to them every
career in which abihty and energy can be
displayed. Till we have done this, let us not
presume to say that there is no genius among
the countrymen of Isaiah, no heroism among
the descendants of the Maccabees.

Sir, in supporting the motion of my honour-
able friend, I am, I firmly believe, supporting
the honour and the interests of the Christian
religion. I should think that I insulted that
religion if I said that it cannot stand unaided
by intolerant laws. Without such laws it was
established, and without such laws it may be
maintained. It triumphed over the supersti-
tions of the most refined and of the most savage
nations, over the graceful mythology of Greece
and the bloody idolatry of the Northern forests.
It prevailed over the power and policy of the
Roman empire. It tamed the barbarians by
whom that empire was overthrown. But all
these victories were gained not by the help of
intolerance, but in spite of the opposition of
intolerance. The whole history of Christianity
proves that she has little indeed to fear from
persecution as a foe, but much to fear from
persecution as an ally. May she long con-
tinue to bless our country with her benignant
6i

Civil Disabilities of the Jews

influence, strong in her sublime philosophy,
strong in her spotless morality, strong in those
internal and external evidences to which the
most powerful and comprehensive of human
intellects have yielded assent, the last solace of
those who have outlived every earthly hope,
the last restraint of those who are raised
above every earthly fear I But let not us,
mistaking her character and her interests,
fight the battle of truth with the weapons ot
error, and endeavour to support by oppression
that religion which first taught the human
race the great lesson of universal charity.

62

NOTES

* The full title of the publication which forms the peg
for Macaulay's essay is Statement of the Civil Disabilities
and Privations affecting natural born Subjects of His Majesty
professing the Jeivish Religion, commonly called Jezus. It was
printed in 1829 by G. Taylor, Printer, 7 Little James
Street. In the article in the Westminster Revieiv, April
1829, occasioned by this same pamphlet, the address of
the printer, George Taylor, is given as LamVs Conduit
Passage, Red Lion Square. The Statement must have
appeared in two forms. Macaulay describes it as
octavo, but the pages of the copy which Mr. Israel
Solomons possesses measure 12^ by 7I inches. The
margins in this copy have been cut for binding. It
was meant to fold in four, as is shown by the manner
in which the title is repeated on the fourth side. The
title as there printed is exactly that cited by Macaulay.
Probably the document was originally a Petition to
the House of Commons.

The Statement is anonymous, but bears the clear hall-
mark of Francis Henry Goldsmid's style. Cf, D. W.
Marks and A. Lowy, Memoir of Sir Francis Henry Goldsmid,
1879, p. 23 [second edition, 1882, p. 27]. The author
opens with the general assertion that no man ought to
be deprived of civil or political right because of his re-
ligious opinions, «< unless it can be shewn that, from the
removal of their disabilities, injury is likely to result

63

Notes

to the community at large." The Statement goes on
to argue that such removal would not injure the
religion or threaten the government of England, for,
on the one hand, Jews do not proselytise, and, on the
other, they are noted for their " proverbial loyalty."
The experience of the happy effect of emancipation in
France, America, and the Netherlands is next appealed
to. This leads up to a short survey of the history of the
Jews in England before the expulsion in 1290, and after
the return in the time of Cromwell, and an able argu-
ment as to their legal status — including their right to
hold land — follows. The whole concludes with an
appeal for the *' Omission in the Oath of Abjuration
and Dissenters' Declaration, when respectively taken, or
made and subscribed, by persons professing the Jewish
religion, of words obviously inconsistent with such
profession." It is altogether a moderate and able pre-
sentation of the case for the Jews, and fairly deserved the
prominence given to it by Macaulay.

2 Sir Robert Grant (1779-1838) was born in Bengal,
and, after a distinguished career at Cambridge, entered
Parliament in 18 18. In 1830 his first Bill was rejected;
but a better fate rewarded his effort of 1833. Soon after-
wards he went to India as Governor of Bombay. Grant
was the author of some famous sacred poems, one of the
best and most popular of which was his translation of
Psalm civ., '< O Worship the King."

3 There had been a change of Government. Parliament
was dissolved on July 24, 1830, and in the new parlia-
ment the Duke of Wellington's ministry fell, to be
succeeded by the Grey administration..

* See comments on this passage in the Introduction.

^ Professor F. C. Montague remarks that "probably
Perceval, Goulburn, and Vansittart are more particularly
meant." These were Chancellors between 18 10 and 1830.

64

Notes

• Oatton (Surrey) and Old Sarum (Wilts) were
'* pocket boroughs without inhabitants," and, like the
corrupt borough of Penryn (Cornwall), were disfran-
chised by the Reform Act. Macaulay was far from im-
plying that Jews actually did own any corrupt boroughs.
His argument is based on the fact that nothing in the
then state of the law could prevent such ownership,

' *' Henry Pelham Francis Pelham Clinton, fourth
Duke of Newcastle, 1785- 1851, a high Tory, ejected
some of his tenants at Newark for having voted on the
Whig side in the general election of 1830" (Professor
Montague).

8 This refers to Daniel O'Connell — who, it may be re-
membered, was a consistent friend of the Jewish claims.

9 William Laud (1573-1645), Archbishop of Canter-
bury from 1633, was one of the principal advisers of
Charles I. in his repression of the Puritans and the
enforcement of episcopacy upon Scotland. He was
attainted in January 1645, and was executed on Tower
Hill.

10 In the Edinburgh Revieiv these sentences follow :
*'It is to put the effect before the cause. It is to vin-
dicate oppression by pointing to the depravation which
oppression has caused." Macaulay felt, no doubt, that
the word "depravation" was unjust, and conveyed an
unintended stigma.

1^ Gaspard de Coligni was a Huguenot victim of the
massacre of St. Bartholomew, in 1572.

Sir Henry Vane was a leader in the Opposition against
Charles I., and was executed in 1662.

^2 The answer given by the lay barons at the Parlia-
ment of Merton in 1236 to the proposal of the prelates to
make the English law of legitimacy correspond with
that of other countries. Sir James H. Ramsay, The
Dawn of the Constitution, pp. 77, 78, following the text of

65 I

Notes

the Statutes of the Realm, reads mutare in the active,
instead of mutari in the passive.

13 The argument is lengthily and moderately stated
in a Times leader for May 3, 1830.

1* This passage confirms what is said in the Introduc-
tion as to Macaulay's personal familiarity with synagogue
usages.

1* Matthew xxvi. 24.

!• Deuteronomy xxviii, 48, 66, 32.

1' Luke X. 29. "Love thy neighbour as thyself" n
from Leviticus xix. 18.

18 In its issue of April 3, 1830, the newspaper John
Bull (which bore on its title-page the legend, " For
God, the King, and the People") published a violent
attack on Mr. Grant's Bill. The article took the form
of a sarcastic plea for the emancipation of the gipsies.
There was a further attack on April 25, and on May 23
the same paper, while rejoicing at the rejection of Mr.
Grant's '* romantic and un-Christian Bill," expressed its
dissatisfaction with the speeches of the opponents of
Jewish emancipation. They were altogether too con-
ciliatory and tolerant to please John Bull.

1" Sir Robert Inglis (1786-1855) entered Parliament in
1824. He opposed the various Catholic Relief Bills and
the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts. Sir Robert
Peel had supported the Catholic claims, and Inglis
thereupon successfully opposed him (1829) as candi-
date for the University of Oxford. Inglis continued
to represent the University until his withdrawal from
parliamentary life. He persistently opposed the Jewish
emancipation. "Inglis was an old-fashioned Tory, a
strong Churchman, with many prejudices and no great
ability " (Dictionary of National Biography),

20 Sir James Mackintosh (1765-1832) supported
Grant's first resolution in 1830; in the interim he had

66

Notes

died. Mackintosh, who entered the House in 1813,
enjoyed much reputation as a philosopher.

21 The Member for Oldham was the noted William
Cobbett (1762-1835), who, after an extraordinary
career in England and America, entered the first Re-
formed Parliament. Cobbett was very violent in his
opposition to Jewish liberties. See note 24.

" The Albigenses, who took their name from one of
their strongholds, the town of Albi on the Tarn, were
an anti-sacerdotal sect in the South of France during the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, infected with Mani-
chaEan heresy. They suffered the most horrible cruelties
in the crusade carried on against them from 1209 to 1218
under the command of Simon de Montfort, the father
of the Simon de Montfort so well known in English
history. See T. F. Tout, <<The Empire and the
Papacy," pp. 216, 401.

»3 See note 6.

24 On March i, 1833, Mr. Hill presented a petition
by Unitarians in favour of the " removal of all Religious
Disqualifications still existing, and especially for the re-
moval of the Disabilities affecting the Jews." It was on
this occasion that Cobbett raised the objection to which
Macaulay's argument is the reply. The reference to
Paine's " Age of Reason " is also a covert hit at Cobbett,
who reprinted Paine's work.

26 Macaulay here overstates the case. The syna-
gogue has at various times been reluctant to receive and
unwilling to seek proselytes. But it does not reject
them.

26 Lord George Gordon (i7Si-i793)> the third son of
Cosmo George, Duke of Gordon, was charged with
high treason for having in 1780 headed terrible riots in
London directed against the removal of certain Roman
Catholic disabilities. He was acquitted on the ground

67

Notes

that he had no treasonable intentions. He afterwards
embraced the Jewish faith, and was received into the
covenant of Abraham in Birmingham, but without
the sanction of the Jewish ecclesiastical authorities in
London. A vivid description of the " No Popery " riots
of 1780 will be found in Dickens' " Barnaby Rudge,"
which also contains a reference to Lord George's change
of religion.

27 In the report of Grant's speech in the Times of
April 18, 1833, occurs this passage; —

" Now with respect to the supposed anti-social prin-
ciples of the Jews, the most sacred of their books had
told them to * Seek the peace of the city whither I have
caused you to be carried away captives, and pray unto
the Lord for it ; for in the peace thereof shall ye have
peace' [Jeremiah xxix. 7]. This principle was fully
recognised by the Jews under Napoleon, who asked
whether they held themselves bound, as citizens of the
State in which they resided, by the laws and customs of
that State ? The Sanhedrin replied that every Jew, re-
garded as a citizen by the State, must obey the laws of
the country which protected them and conform to the
regulations of the civil code ; in short, that Israelites
were bound to consider such countries as their own, and
serve and defend them to the utmost. In a catechism of
the elements of the Jewish faith, intended for the use
of Hebrew youths, it was stated that the Messiah not
having come, the king under whose protection they
lived must be considered as a King of Israel, and that
the country in which they enjoyed such protection was
to be looked upon in the same light as the land of their
forefathers."

Grant followed this up by a masterly survey of the
relations of Jews to various States in the past and
present, and cited evidence of the patriotism and good

68

Notes

citizenship of Jews wherever they had been permitted
an opportunity of displaying those qualities.

28 In Hansard's report (col. 236) Macaulay finished
the paragraph with the words: «<Why not try the
same experiment which has been tried in France and
Prussia, and which was now trying in the United States
of America ? " In the same debate (col. 242), in the
report of Mr. Joseph Hume's speech, occurs the passage :
*' He had a letter in his hand, though he would not
trouble the House by reading it, from Mr. Quincy
Adams, the late President of the United States, stating
that there were no better citizens than the Jews, and
expressing the hope that ere long the whole of Europe
would see the justice and wisdom of freely conceding to
them the fullest political privileges."

FOREIGN EDITIONS

[The numbers in square brackets at the end of the entries
indicate the press-marks of the copies in the British
Museum.]

(a) Macaulay's Essay

(1) [French]. Essais politiques et philosophiques par Lord
Macaulay^ Traduits par M. Guillaume Guizot, Paris,
1862. Pp. 380-398. [12273 ^ 3-]

(2) [Dutch] . Hiitorische en letterkundige Schetsen door Lord
Macaulay. In het Hollandsch overgebragt door Dr. A.
Pierson. Haarlem, 1865. I. 105-120. [12272 aa 23.]

(3) [Italian], Saggi biograjici e cr'itici di Tommaso Babington
Macaulay, Venione daW Inglese con note di Cesare Rovighi,
Torino, 1859-1866. V. 288-302. [12273 ^^ 3-]

(4) [English text, with Introduction and Notes in
German]. Civil Disabilities of the Jetus. Eine 1 831
veroffentlichte Abhandlung von Thomas Babington Macaulay,

69

Notes

Herausgegeben und mtt Anmerkungen versehen von Dr. F.
Fischer. Berlin, 1882. [4033 f 32 (10).]

(5) [Roumanian]. The son of Prince John Ghica
(for some time Roumanian minister at the Court of
St. James'), who was educated in England, translated
Macaulay's Essay on the " Civil Disabilities of the
Jews" into Roumanian. The translation appeared as
a small pamphlet in Bucharest. Political exigencies
and the rise of anti-Jewish feeling in Roumania de-
manded the suppression of the translation, to avoid
awkward questions and to remove a possible bar to the
young man's career. The pamphlet has in conse-
quence almost completely disappeared. A few copies,
however, have been saved, and one of them is in the
library of the Rev. Dr. M. Gaster.

(3) Macaulay's Speech

(i) A German translation of Macaulay's Speech on
"Jewish Disabilities" was published in 1881, in reply
to the anti-Semitic campaign of Stocker and Henrici.
The full title is Macaulay's Rede fur die Emancipation der
Juden gehalten im Englischen Unterhaus^ am I'J April 1833.
Ubersetzt von A. E. Frankfurt a. Main, 188 1. [4033
f3i(i2).]

(2) A Spanish translation will be found on pp. 109-
122 of Dhcursos Parlamentarios de Lord Macaulay^ Traducidos
del Ingles por Daniel Lopex. Madrid, 1885. [8 1 39 aa 66.]

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